


The Unquiet Grave

by imagined_melody



Category: Black Sails
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, (past- mentioned), Canon Compliant, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4975021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Guthries are unseated from Nassau, Flint has a reason to sail back to London. On the way, he encounters a familiar face he'd thought never to see again. (A bit of a ghost story, just in time for the month of Halloween. Spoilers through the end of Season 2.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unquiet Grave

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is loosely based on the traditional song from which it gets its title, "The Unquiet Grave." I'd encourage you to listen to [my favorite version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnCKCtz4OQw), which I had on repeat while I wrote this. 
> 
> First fic in a new fandom, and first time writing a ghost story. I hope I did all right with it.

There was a time when James Flint had thought that nothing would ever compel him to return to London. England had proven far more of an enemy than a friend from the very beginning, and Charleston sealed its loyalties; Flint would find no ally there. It was no longer his birthplace—it was much more accurate to say that Nassau had birthed him, a baptism of fire into a life he hardly wanted, until he realized that no other lay before him. 

There were too many other lives ended in the wake of his passage from McGraw to Flint. An identity sealed by blood, the way documents are sealed in wax. The anger in Flint’s heart served as the brand to mark from whence he came. 

In truth, if the Guthries had not been removed from Nassau, and war between the pirates and the Crown had not been kindled, James would have had no reason to set sail for London at all. But some battles cannot be fought on familiar ground, and this one—of all things, the matter on which he and Thomas had begun their crusade—was the sole event to call him back to what had once, long ago, been home. 

It was a voyage of several days, and as they set course for British soil, a palpable uneasiness fell over the crew. The conditions at sea seemed to match their troubled mood. Dark clouds threatened a storm that never came; in the mornings, fog slithered across the decks and obscured the view ahead. After two days, it seemed that everything had fallen quiet, save for the creaking of the boards and a strangely far-away echo of waves below.

Flint stayed awake until the early morning on the third night. Ostensibly he was strategizing, plotting their best course of opposition against their enemies in England—but this late into the night, even John Silver had been dismissed to his own bunk to sleep, and James had glanced at neither his maps nor his books for some time. The lantern flame flickered at his side, the only point of light in the room with the moon concealed by cloud. He could not say how long he had been staring at the dancing flame, transfixed by its constant steady glow. 

The air around him seemed to whisper, the ship groaning quietly in response to the slight change in the wind, and the water answering back with a sigh of the waves against the hull. The candle sputtered slightly, and again there was a whisper of breeze in the stillness of the darkened quarters.

This time, it seemed almost to form words.

Flint’s eyes darted up from the lantern, and he held perfectly still for a space of several seconds, but no other sound came. From what he could hear, both in the cabin and outside on the weather deck, everything was quiet. Still, he could not shake the feeling that something had changed in the room—something just outside his perception, which had retreated into obscurity again. His footsteps echoed ominously as he rose from his seat and went to the cabin door, watchful for anything that might have made a noise.

Out on the deck, it was beginning to be bitterly cold; the wind had picked up slightly, sending gentle gusts of frigid air across the ship and making Flint draw his coat tighter about himself. A light, drizzling rain had started to fall amid the heavy mist. It gave the air an ambient, tangible quality, but other than the drifting fog, there was no more movement outside the ship than there had been inside. The hushed noise of the ocean was all Flint could hear. Quietly he crept to the rail and looked over the edge, squinting to try and catch a glimpse of the water below.

All at once the air seemed to shift palpably. Flint felt another sudden gust of wind, and had just begun to step back when something else caught his eye: a movement in the water, like something forming from beneath. He leaned forward to look more closely—but his eyes barely registered the sight before he was reeling back again. 

Through the wall of grey, it looked almost like a hand was reaching up to him, a long and translucent arm protruding from the haze of the sea.

James’ heart thudded hard enough that he feared it would escape from his chest. _It must be a trick of the fog,_ he thought to himself, stumbling back toward the cabin. His hands shook as he grasped for the doorknob. The air now felt deathly cold, each tiny freezing raindrop pricking at his skin like sewing pins; his heart still racing, James rushed through the threshold and pulled the door shut behind him.

The first thing he noticed once he was inside was the lantern’s flame, which was sputtering violently—even after the door had closed and the wind from outside was blocked out, it danced and wavered as though caught in the draft of a gale. It took him a second to notice the other difference in the room: a man, standing in the shadows by the window, barely illuminated by the scarce light from the table. 

He was dressed in markedly finer attire than any member of the ship’s crew, not that any of them had leave to be in the captain’s cabin at this hour; but that possibility was eliminated further by a closer look at the figure before him. The man’s skin was almost blue in its paleness; there was no color to the lips, and the light did not quite reach his eyes. The sight of him made James feel cold down to his very bones. His posture was not quite rigid where he stood by the window, though there was a statuesque aspect to it, as though immobility were his natural state. But there was a kindness in the face too, despite its pallor and stillness. It was a kindness James would recognize anywhere.

“Thomas,” he breathed, his voice the loudest sound in the otherwise silent room.

The man’s eyes did not falter from James’ face, and James could not bring himself to look away for even a second. The blink of an eye felt too long not to have this apparition within his sight. A small smile curved at the corner of Thomas’ mouth, despite the sadness in his gaze. “James,” he said when a second’s time had passed. “Oh James, my love. Whatever are you doing here?”

James’ knees went weak at the sound of that familiar voice; he reached out and grasped the side of the table before his legs gave out and failed to hold him upright entirely. “What do you mean—what am _I_ —“ he stammered, before managing a full sentence. “How can you possibly be here?” He felt as though his breath had suddenly been stopped.

Thomas turned his head slightly to glance out the porthole window, though it was near impossible to see anything through the fog. “I suppose you might say I came from the water,” he admitted. “My soul sleeps in the sea. And you…” He looked at James with a wry twist to his mouth. “You called it forth when you arrived here.”

 _This cannot be_ , James thought, his mind whirling. He passed a hand over his face, both to clear his head and to mask the tremble in his lips. “But why?” he finally asked. 

“Why?” Thomas repeated, his eyebrow arching delicately. “I imagine you were told that I died in the ward, after I was taken to hospital. But that is not entirely true.” He stepped forward a bit, the move putting him closer to the flickering candlelight; James clutched the table harder, not trusting himself to move an inch. “I had lost everything dear to me—Miranda and you. And with you both went any hope of achieving our dreams for Nassau. It was abundantly clear to me that my father would never permit either of you to return to London, nor would there be any possibility of my journeying to find you. Such loss is enough to make men seek desperate ends.”

“You…” Flint said, before realizing he could not bring himself to finish that sentence. The words snarled together and caught in his throat. Tears formed and itched at his eyes, and he willed them away with as much force as he could muster.

Thomas inclined his head in a nod. “The aides in charge of my care were…not especially vigilant. It was not so difficult to find a way past them.” He met Flint’s eyes again, and the look on his face was so kind that Flint could hardly return his gaze. “I made for the docks. Not to escape—with my father’s influence in the city, I doubt I could have gotten far if I had tried properly to flee. It was early in the morning, too early for any other respectable soul to be about. I wish I could say I hesitated at the precipice, but I must confess I committed that greatest of indiscretions with hardly a doubt in my mind. At the time, as desperate as I was, it seemed the most attractive course of action.” Now the look in Thomas’ eyes did flash with something like regret, although his expression remained steady as he spoke again. “They pulled me from the water several hours later, but some part of me still remained. In the current, in the waves. To be with you always.”

The idea was as romantic as any Thomas had ever had, but it made James’ stomach feel sick to think of it. To see his lover with him forever was alluring, yes, but for it to happen like this? He would rather have it any other way. The sea had taken so much from him already—and now, it seemed, it had claimed this last, great prize.

Thomas must have seen his distress. His eyes were soft when Flint could bring himself to meet them again. “Oh, James, I am so terribly sorry. I have left such wreckage in my wake.”

“No, not you. Never you.” His tongue stumbled in his haste to get the words out. “It’s my fault everything’s gone to shit. It’s all my fucking fault.” Anger boiled up in him, its appearance still shocking even after so many years of the ache of it living in his chest and consuming him little by little. He slammed his fist against the table, unable to contain it any longer—and it was this, finally, which made Thomas approach him with a look of concern, until only the desk stood between them. “Miranda is dead,” he choked out, and from the corner of his eye he could see Thomas fall back slightly in shock. “One last chance, Thomas. One last attempt to do what we always dreamed. And all that I accomplished was sending Miranda to her death.”

Despite the obvious grief in his face, Thomas managed a faint smile. “Then perhaps it is time for a new dream.”

Thomas’ hand lay on the table, close enough to touch, and James stared at it, transfixed. Slowly he reached out a trembling hand to him—and felt his breath catch in his throat when Thomas withdrew back a step. “Thomas?” he questioned, surprised at the weakness of his voice.

“It would kill you,” Thomas said, and for the first time there was something vulnerable in his voice. “Any man who touches the dead will not be long to live himself. Which is a pity,” he continued, and Flint was almost startled to see that familiar twinkle coming back into Thomas’ eye, “because you’ve no idea how much I have missed kissing you. Oh, my love. I wish I could do so now.”

“Do it,” James said immediately, feeling frantic as he stepped around to the side of the table. “Do it, Thomas, I want—“

Thomas shook his head. “I’m afraid you would find me too cold for your tastes,” he replied. “There is no life left here, despite what you may think you see. And one of us has to live on.”

“But—“ James felt as though he could not remember how to form words. This encounter seemed like a fleeting dream, one he could feel slipping away from him even as he experienced it. He had lost Thomas once already; how could he stand to see him vanish a second time? “Will I ever see you again?”

“You should not have seen me even this once,” Thomas said with a frown. James’ fingers itched to ease away the furrow between his brows. After a moment, he said, “If you are able, come and find me where I lie. My father could not have me buried in the churchyard after what I had done, but there is a marker for me in the grove, under the old oak tree. The leaves will all have fallen this time of year, but you may yet find something living there.” He smiled. “Be safe, James. I will always love you.”

It was too much; James could not stand to see him go. With a frantic cry of “Thomas—“ he rushed forward, his hand inches from the apparition’s. Warnings be damned, he thought, he didn’t _care,_ if he could just _touch—_

But his fingers, when they fell, met only empty air and the wood of the table. Thomas was gone as quickly as he had appeared. The room was once again as silent as the grave, other than James’ heavy, labored breaths.

It was almost dawn. Through the hazy air, the faintest glimmers of light were beginning to penetrate, casting the room in a dim grey glow, though most of it still lay in shadow. James sagged against the desk, his heart racing and tight with a grief he had not felt so potently since he had seen Miranda’s body fall to the floor in Charleston. He tried to force his breathing to settle, and struggled to think clearly through the utter frenzy his thoughts had been plunged into. Suddenly his mind seized onto Thomas’ words and clung to them: _I am with you always, in the current and the waves_. Wildly he raced for the door, intent on making his way back out to the weather deck; perhaps if he stood there, he would catch sight of the man once again. But just as he reached for the doorknob, his foot landed on something which, when he glimpsed it, finally stopped him in his tracks.

There on the ground, though it was nearly wintertime and they had been near no trees for several days, was a vibrantly green oak leaf.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to find me and watch me obsess about _Black Sails_ (and a multitude of other things), I can be found at [my tumblr](http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com).


End file.
